I just realized that the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has reopened since I was in New York City last. It’s located at Lincoln Center.<P>Their website starts at: <A HREF="http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/lpa.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/lpa.html</A> <P>Since I’ll be in NYC this weekend, it occurs to me that for a bookworm like me there could be no more pleasant way to spend a few hours than to browse through the “Jerome Robbins Dance Division” of the Performing Arts Library. I just spent the last few minutes browsing through their online catalog with such juicy stuff as “Sauvagae, Sex Roles, and Semiotics: Representations of Native Americans in the French Ballet” (Meglin 2000), “Analysis of variation in choreography and performance : Swan lake Act II Pas de deux” (Briginshaw 1988), and some unpronounceable book titles about ballet in China.<P>I once spent an enjoyable few hours at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library watching videos of Smuins Ballet/SF, Oakland Ballet, and SFB School’s annual workshop. Think of what the NYCPL must have … yummy!<P>I’m such a sucker for “Symphony in C” I’ll probably have them pull some videos.<P>Anybody have any other suggestions about what to watch while I’m there?<BR>

Have a safe and wonderful trip, Jeff.<P>Give my regards to Broadway!<P>There should be tapes of Pavlova, one of Olga Spessivetseva dancing Giselle, Maria Tallchief on the Bell Telephone Hour. <P>Would be interesting to see some of the reconstructions that Joffrey has done with some of the Nijinsky ballets - and maybe a reconstruction of Bronislava's Les Noches.<P>But maybe you don't like old stuff.

Thanks for starting this thread, Jeff, but since the library covers all kinds of performing arts beyind just ballet, perhaps this topic better belongs in Miscellany. I look forward to your firsthand report.<P>Also, check out these previous threads:<P><a href=../../../ubb/Forum11/HTML/000638.html target=_blank><B>New York Public Library of the Performing Arts</B></a><P><a href=../../../ubb/Forum11/HTML/000747.html target=_blank><B>NY Public Library Performing Arts Collection</B></a><p>[This message has been edited by Azlan (edited January 09, 2002).]

Thanks for the tips on prior threads… interesting reading … But, I didn’t understand a single word of what Nancy, Trina, Karen, and Azlan were talking about… O’Neal’s Baloon? Soup Nazi’s? Borscht on 54th Street? Black Hole of Calcutta/ Disneyland? Paraphrasing from P.G. Wodehouse, “Message baffling, please send cipher-code.”<P>For my viewing pleasure, I think I’ll stick with “Maria Tallchief on the Bell Telephone Hour” (whatever that is). Even in the days before I liked ballet, I remember being struck watching Suzanne Farrell dancing in “Movements” on a Great Performances broadcast. It never occurred to me that anybody could dance to serial music.<BR>

I can decipher "Maria Tallchief on the Bell Telephone Hour."<P>Back in the old days on television there was a program called "The Bell Telephone Hour" (this was before the breakup of ATT and all that re-arranging of phone companies - when the phone system was known as Bell Telephone). <P>On that program was presented many wonderful artists, plays, of all kinds. On one of those programs Prima Ballerina Maria Tallchief danced. A film (probably before the days of tape) was made of it and is available.<P>

Salzberg: “It was also in the days when we thought that television might possibly be a medium for serious art.”<P>And, it isn’t now? Are you urging television to do as Emeril says and “kick it up a notch” ? J/K What about this pretty interesting sounding music and dance episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”? (There’s a C-D thread about that show somewhere.)<P>And, didn’t I see Shakira dancing a 45 rpm version of “Arabian” recently? But seriously, I thought the post-modernist sensibility collapsed the distinction between “high” and “low” art … or so say all those humanities graduate students who are probably never going to graduate because they are watching “Buffy” and “Angel” instead of reading Shakespeare and Melville.<P>Thanks for the explanation, Basheva. Did this sort of public exposure really make a difference in the democratization of the fine and performing arts? Such thoughts often lead me to wonder where future ballet audiences will come from.<BR>

I can't attest to any general diffusion of democratization. But it can't hurt to put it out there, you never know who will nibble and then want a bite.<P>I can tell you how such shows affected one little girl watching a very tiny screen on a black and white TV, in the early years when Alistair Cooke was hosting Omnibus. She happened to pause one day in her childish play and saw what she later would know to be the adagio section of a grand pas de deux - in classic ballet.<P>For some reason that image stayed in her mind, and quite a number of years later when the Bolshoi Ballet came to town and she could barely scrape together the cost of two tickets for herself and her husbnd, she went.<P>And several years after that, she attended her first ballet class. And quite a number of years later, decided to post under the name "Basheva."<P>

OK, C-D friends, here’s my quick hit on The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts:<P>First, well worth a visit even if only a quick out-of-towner’s stop like mine. It is located between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater towards the northwest corner of Lincoln Center. Very good location if your visit is of the “it’s half past noon so this must be Rockefeller Center” variety.<P>Also, if any New Yorkers are reading better acquainted with the NYPLPA, please do not hesitate to post in any corrections and suggestions to my info.<P>Compared to its San Francisco counterpart, this place is HUGE. Along with the other serious research collections, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division is located up on the third floor. I had less than an hour so I went straight to the third floor, where you have to check in your coat before they let you into the business part of the floor, essentially a large room with PCs and video projection stuff on rows of tables.<P>The Librarian told me to look up their holdings on their online catalog and jot whatever I wanted to see on a requisition slip. Unfortunately, many of the really juicy sounding stuff are restricted—copyrights, unions, intellectual property, etc. For example, videos of Jerome Robbins’ works require permission from his estate and videos of School of American Ballet workshop performances could only be viewed if I was a current SAB student or former SAB student actually in the taped performance (LOL). I picked a WNET video, “Balanchine in America.” One registration slip later, the Librarian sent my req. to the “Playback Room” which I was assured was run by trolls and gnomes who would set the video up so I could watch it by remote monitor right there on the third floor.<P>I was shown a bench with a large, professional looking monitor and controls on a laptop. The video, which is of marketable quality, seems to date from the early 1980s. I thought I recognized Darci Kistler, Kyra Nichols, and Maria Calegari in “Serenade.” Even on tape … perfectly Sublime …. Of the portion of “Western Symphony” I squeezed in, there was Melinda Roy and Jock Soto. It would take a lot of reminding that ballet is “high brow” not to start slapping one’s knees and whooping along.<P>Then, I was out of time. In order to make better use of my time, I’m going to compile a list of stuff I’d like to see from their online catalog before showing up.<P>Basheva, I didn’t forget Maria Tallchief on the Bell Telephone Hour. At Tower Records by there I spotted a video of excerpts from appearances 1958 to 1966 on Video Artists International. Also on VAI, Maria Tallchief in Montreal. O yes and beautiful sentiments on the life long effect that the mass media can have on promoting—even if in such initially small and indefinite ways—the gifts that are the fine and performing arts.<P>C-D moderators, in addition to working on my notes for NYCB performances, I have some notes on a lecture/demonstration. But where might be the appropriate place for that?<BR>

Jeff - you are always such a treat to hear from. <P>But, you didn't have to go all the way to New York for that Balanchine documentary tape. If it was the one I taped in June 1984, then I have it.<P>It also has Apollo, Prodigal Son and parts of Cotillon.

Jeff, thanks. As for the notes, you're welcome to post it in either of the forums as Francis described. If you have photos to go along with it, send them to me (perhaps we can the article and the photos up in the Features section).

<B>Dance History Leaps to Life in the Archives</B><BR>Article in the NY Times By Jennifer Dunning<P>The New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is one of the city's great cultural treasure troves. It is the largest dance archive in the world, with holdings that date back to 1460. But even dance fanatics tend to forget about this research center once known simply as "the Dance Collection."<P>What could dance, that restlessly vital art form, have to do with dusty tomes pored over in sleep-inducing fluorescent light and in tomblike silence? Even worse, walls of chill, blank-eyed computer monitors and esoteric programs must now be negotiated to get to those tomes at all. But for the adventurous, whether a professional or someone with a simple curiosity or love for dance, the rewards and even the act of burrowing can quickly become addictive. <P><A HREF="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/18/arts/dance/18BALL.html" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

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